all the things we'll never know
by TheVerbalThing ComesAndGoes
Summary: "Was it really that bad?" he wonders. "Not anymore." She smiles. He wants to cry. Craig/Ellie AU. Mentions character death.


all the things we'll never know

Summary: "Was it really that bad?" he wonders. "Not anymore." She smiles. He wants to cry.

Craig, on the road, and the events leading up to Ellie's death. One-shot. AU, obviously. Craig/Ellie (with some Craig/Manny on the side)

Disclaimer: lyrics are "Carve Your Heart Out Yourself" by dashboard confessional

**A/N: **this is just an idea (one of many) that's been nagging at me for awhile; i am just SO glad to finally get it out of my head. enjoy. as always, all feedback is welcome :]**  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>Hopelessness is your cell<br>Since you've drawn out these lines  
>Are you protected from trying times<em>

_Well you'd like to think that you were invincible.  
>Yeah, well weren't we all once before we felt loss for the first time?<br>Well this is the last time._

Ellie shares with him, once, that she didn't think they bonded over their scars, but rather their avoidance of them. Craig doesn't believe her, not really, until he kisses her after seeing photos of a smiling Ashley and Ali in front of Westminster Abbey and she kisses back after an argument with her mother followed by nearly an hour of staring at her old box cutter.

She tells him, lying naked and a little sweaty under a thin sheet on his bed in the middle of July, that she kind of always thought Sean would be her first. He pretends the brutally honest admission doesn't sting. He asks why it didn't happen, but she never gives an answer - never an honest one, anyway - and decides maybe he doesn't really want to know why she chose _him, _instead.

Somehow they manage to maintain their friendship because keeping that in tact is as important to him as he knows it is to her. It's different, though, he knows; he finds himself lingering with a hand on her shoulder even though it's unnecessary and she never complains about his sudden need to tuck or pull her into his side when she sits next to him even though there is plenty of room on the other end of the couch. But, in spite of this new-found closeness, they don't sleep together again. He wonders, but never asks why. He can't push her on this, can't afford to lose her, can't afford to lose what she means to him.

He goes on the road on a quest for musical fame and recognition and stardom. She goes to University both to prove her mother wrong and to contradict Jimmy (_"So you're really going to, like, follow Craig around all summer?"_).

In a lonely hotel room in the Marriott on the outskirts of Alberta, his dreams are often haunted by real moments between them and what could have been if only they could have gotten out of their own way. (One step forward, twelve steps back.)

The first dream is eerily reminiscent of a hazy, summer memory. They're laying side by side on the hood of his red Camaro. The top is down and it's parked in the middle of a parking lot; he doesn't know how or why they got there but they're eating ice cream from cones and she's laughing about something and he's still smiling when he wakes up and Manny asks, climbing onto his lap, if he was dreaming about her. (To avoid yet another argument, he lies and says yes.)

Somehow, in between gigs in Quebec and British Columbia and a brief stint in LA, they lose touch.

It would be easy to place all the blame on his relationship with Manny; she's always been jealous on some level of his friendship with Ellie (and any other female) and Craig reasons, it's just better for them, if he doesn't make this any more difficult than it needs to be by pouring salt into what seems to be an always gaping wound. He knows he's given Manny enough reason to be doubtful, but that still doesn't erase the lingering question that always seems to exist between him and Ellie.

_"Well that's just a convenient excuse, isn't it?"  
><em>

_"What do you mean?" They're lying on the couch in his "garage-turned-harem" (her words, not his), face-to-face, tips of their noses just barely touching.  
><em>

_"You can't use Manny as a fallback excuse anytime you need to run away from something. Or someone."_

_"...I thought you were the one who was running away."_

_"Only from you." She smiles ruefully and leans toward him. Just as their lips meet (for the second time, he reminds himself wistfully) his eyes snap open and the dream is over and he awakes, unfulfilled.  
><em>

Craig doesn't know what the dream is supposed to mean to him, what it's supposed to tell him and the feeling that he's missing... _something_ stays with him.

Being on the road is harder than he thought it would be. _Cliche, _a voice that sounds eerily similar to Ellie hisses. He just thought he was ready, thought that he knew what he was getting himself into. He thought it'd be easier with Manny along. But it isn't. His music is starting to feel repetitive, uninspired and after the impression he made with Leo he's under a lot of pressure to make _something_ happen; Manny doesn't trust him to be out of her sight for longer than two minutes (though, after incidents with a blond and a redhead, he doesn't exactly blame her); and Ellie... everything's changed with Ellie.

He'll admit to using Manny's naivete, obliviousness, and trusting nature to his advantage. She never questions him about the drugs or the other women that he can never seem to say no to. Craig can't help but remind himself that Ellie would, without question.

"I just think it's weird," Manny states abruptly as she fixes her makeup.

"What is?"

"That suddenly you two don't talk anymore. No visits since your gig in Vancouver. Nothing." Manny looks at him, her gaze so directed and piercing that he needs to look away. He knows what she's really saying,_ "What happened between the two of you this time?"_

"It's nothing," he insists - _lies_. He can't count the number of times he's reached for the phone to call her before hanging up at the last second. _  
><em>

Two nights before he gets The Call from Marco, he dreams of her again. Although, as he recalls, it's more of a memory than a dream - not really.

_Another show, another temporary home made out of a hotel room. Vancouver, this time. Manny and Marco are touring the town while Ellie politely declined, not moments before her cell phone rings and she locks herself in the bathroom._

_"Ellie? You okay?"_

_"...Yeah."_

_"You don't sound-" The door opens before he can finish the sentence and, out of instinct it seems, his eyes immediately fall to her wrist, the spots of blood in the sink and the razor on the floor. "I thought you stopped doing that."_

_"I thought I locked the door. I did stop." __From the hardened edge in her voice and the glare she's shooting him he doubts she's telling the truth. He never thought he would be someone she'd lie to._

_"I mean, I didn't know you'd started again."_

_"Why would you?" she snaps. "I mean you let us come here to find you and Manny all cute and cozy, playing house - with no warning, _nothing_ - why would I tell you _anything_ anymore?"  
><em>

_"Why are you yelling? What happened?"_

_"You!"_

_"You're not really mad at me-"_

_"Don't tell me how I feel, Craig-"_

_"What happened?" He steps toward her, inadvertently pinning her between him and the bathroom counter. This close he can see that her eyes are red, angry, and there are streaks of tears on her cheeks. He's never seen her cry before. He's never seen her this _angry _before. "Ellie. What happened?"  
><em>

_"My dad. He's dead." Her face crumples the second she says the words out loud and for a moment, Craig hates himself for making her say it - but then again, by the look of her arm, she hasn't been doing too well with the whole denial thing. Craig pulls her into an embrace that he feels her resist at first, but then he wraps his arms tight around her waist and she finally lets go, allowing her arms to wrap around his middle.  
><em>

_"...This was Marco's idea you know_," _Ellie tells him after a bit of silence._

_"What was_?"

_"To come visit you..." He doesn't know why he thinks she needs to tell him that but he nods anyway._

_"I wasn't going to come but I just..my mother started drinking again when we got the news about my dad. And I used to be able to handle it - handle her - "_

_"You shouldn't have to_."

_"I just feel like everyone else has their shit together and I'm...falling apart.__ I don't know what's wrong with me-_"

_"There's nothing wrong with you, Elle." If he were Ashley he'd start researching depression and all the different forms of anti depressants (and probably try to use Ellie's misery as inspiration for a song). If he were Manny, he'd recommend getting a piercing or a tattoo or throwing a party to make herself feel better. But he isn't and he doesn't._

_"...I'm getting blood on your shirt._" _She shakes her head, tries to pull away but he doesn't let her._

_"Who cares?_"

_"I'm sorry."_

_If he were thinking straight he would have asked what she was sorry for._

_He didn't._

He doesn't know what time the phone rings but he knows that it's late, and the first time it goes off he doesn't answer. By the second and third time, Manny's awake and groaning her resistance - hungover, he knows - reaching blindly over to the nightstand to answer his cell. "Ugh, hello?"

He must have fallen asleep for no more than a few seconds, but suddenly Manny's shaking him. Her wide brown eyes are filled with unshed tears that immediately cause his heart to constrict with panic. "It's Marco. He's saying...there was some kind of accident. He wants - he's saying -"

Craig takes the phone before she can finish. "Marco? What happened?"

Craig doesn't think he's ever heard so much grief expressed in one word; he can barely understand Marco over the sounds of his sobs. "Ellie..."

And everything changes.

_"You're an idiot," she tsks.  
><em>

_Ellie is sitting on the edge of his bathroom counter top, wearing a thin white dress that comes to a stop above her knees, while her feet are bare. He's never seen her in white; now he wishes he had. She is beautiful, a stark contrast to the sad state of his pitiful counter top, which is practically covered in pills, bottles, and fine white powder.__ "Are you trying to OD?" _

_ "I'm unwell, didn't you know that?"_

_"You're fine. An idiot," Ellie insists, "but fine."_

_"No I'm not. I'm-"_

_"Manageable. Completely and totally manageable. You just choose not to be."_

_"What does that even mean?"_

_"It means you can actually have moments where it doesn't hurt."_

_"...Was it really that bad?"_

_"Not anymore." She smiles. He wants to cry. _

_"Why didn't you tell me?"_

_"Honestly, I don't know if it would have made a difference." She tilts her head to the side, watching him, her hair a smooth shiny red curtain. How had he not noticed how beautiful she was before? "You noticed," she affirms._

_"I miss you. I've missed you for awhile."_

_"You haven't spoken to me in almost two years. What's the difference now?"_

_Good point. "I didn't think I'd never get the chance to again."_

_"Don't do this to yourself, Craig," she tells him softly. She gestures to the pills, the drugs.  
><em>

_"I'm mourning."_

_"Don't be stupid. I'm not worth it."_

_Without thinking, he leans forward, pressing his forehead against hers, surprised that she doesn't just disappear or he doesn't wake up at the contact. "You always thought that. It's never been true." _

_He's arguing with a ghost. That realization is what chokes him up._

_"I can't be the reason you self-destruct. I don't want to be." Even in death, she's putting him first.  
><em>

_"I've been doing that for a while," he admits quietly. Her hand comes up to rest against his cheek; it's cold. _

_"Just tell me...__ Was it really an accident?" She shrugs, a small smile on her lips, legs swinging back and forth. Her feet bump against the cabinet but don't make a sound._

_"Elle..." Her cool forehead presses lightly, softly, against his. "I-"_

_"I know." She leans forward, her cool lips falling on the corner of his mouth. "Me too."_

He comes to on the bathroom floor, the sound of Manny's shouts and fists banging against the door coming into his hearing.

_"Craig!" _

"I'm here," he replies meekly, though he knows she probably can't hear him. "I'm okay." _Another lie_.

While Manny's trying to pick the lock, he pulls himself upright, leaning his upper body against the bathroom counter. The pills and cocaine are still where he left them, though he didn't manage to take as many as he was planning to_. _He remembers the dream - his last vision of Ellie - remembers her telling him she didn't want to be the reason behind his self-destruction. It makes him angry, because he's thinking of honoring a promise he didn't even make to a ghost, and she won't even be around to hear about it. He understands why she may have felt helpless: her father killed as a consequence of war; her mother's fall from sobriety and third stumble into rehab; Marco's not-so-subtle hints that she was on the verge of failing out of school. But god-dammit why did she have to go and do _this_?

__"Just tell me...__ Was it really an accident?"__

He never got his answer, but all he has to do is think over the last time he saw her, _really_ saw her; and that moment in a hotel bathroom in Vancouver. It wasn't, he knows.

Manny bursts through the door in a mess of tears and exclamations. "_Craig!_ Baby, are you okay?"

She hugs him close, tight enough to nearly constrict his breathing. "Yeah," he insists. "Yeah I'll be fine."

But Manny shakes her head, her eyes on the finely cut lines of cocaine near the sink. The tears finally fall from her big, brown eyes when she looks at him, and they land on his shirt. "...Liar."_  
><em>


End file.
